Thursday, 7 September 2017

My speech to ConservativeProgress / London Area Conservatives Conference

Thank you very much for that
warm and generous introduction.

And thank you to Nabil Najjar,
Luke Springthorpe, Mo Fisher and Ian Twinn and everyone at Conservative
Progress and London Conservatives for organising today’s conference. It is refreshing to have this opportunity to look forward positively to what we must
do better next time, so that we can avoid that awful, gut-wrenching feeling we
all had when the results of the exit poll flashed up on the TV screens at 10pm
on the night of the election.

To plan for the future we must
be honest with ourselves about what went wrong.Our failures must not be brushed under the carpet, nor should the
process result in a culture of blame and recrimination. But the Conservative
Party owes it to its members, donors and activists to involve them in that
debate.

And that includes to listening
to opinions which may be unpalatable to those within the Matthew Parker Street
bubble, opinions formed through tens of thousands of conversations on the
doorsteps, and in the pubs, workplaces and dinner tables up and down the
country.

To seek to exclude our members
and activists from that debate and to allow those who were responsible for the
campaign to be both judge and jury, would be a dreadful disservice to all those
who gave freely of their time, energy and money to help secure a Conservative
Government.

In 2015 I was invited by
Andrew Feldman to contribute to the Voluntary Party Review. I gave detailed evidence
and submitted papers on what we had achieved in West Kent, changes which
resulted in one of the most successful “groupings” in the UK; a way of working
which reduced costs and trebled the amount of money we had available to spend
on campaigning.

A model which maximised
efficiencies whilst ensuring the autonomy of Associations and protected their long
held and strongly defended right to select their own candidates.

To help prepare the ground for
what we hoped would be a far reaching and fundamental reform, I also wrote several
articles for Conservative Home, the first of which contained the following preface

“We must ensure that any changes are bedded-in
before our next major electoral challenge. Whatever we do, we should not allow
a small number of recalcitrant Associations to use self-interest to block
essential reforms which in our hearts we all know must come.

The Party is in a unique position of strength.
We have won an election that most people didn’t expect us to win. Our opponents
are in disarray. We are ahead in the polls and our finances are strong.

The temptation is to do nothing – or simply to
“tinker”. To do so would be a dreadful missed opportunity. It could be decades
before the moons are in such favourable alignment again. Having helped to win
the war, I really hope Lord Feldman and his group have the courage win the
peace and bequeath a voluntary party fit for the future.”

That was written in the summer
of 2015.

In the light of how little
progress has been made and with the benefit of the 2017 campaign fresh in our
minds, how prescient those words turned out to be.

The first lesson we must
address is the institutional dysfunctionality of much of the voluntary
party. Please note the word “much” – because throughout the UK we are hugely
fortunate to have the loyalty and support of thousands of people who constantly
give more than their fair share, which is just as well as we have even greater
numbers who have no intention of pulling their weight.

In Kent as elsewhere we have
members, many in their 80s and some in their 90s, many in poor health, who
struggled from door to door delivering leaflets and canvassing for support. We
had volunteers in the office six days per week, some for 8 hours a day, packing
envelopes and manning the phones. And we even had members who took their entire
annual leave to enable them to work full time, such was their determination to
defeat the threat Jeremy Corbyn posed to our country.

But sadly we also have more
than our fair share of laptop warriors, who think elections are won on the
comments pages of Con Home or Political Betting. Those with sharp elbows who
always seen to be front and centre of the photograph for any visiting Minister,
but cannot be seen for dust when there is work to be done, and too many who see
the Party as a vehicle for self-advancement and self-aggrandisement, with no
intention of contributing to a common goal or shared endeavour.

Locally we must accept that the
Conservative Party is a national brand with branches throughout the country,
just like Sainsbury’s, NatWest Bank or Hilton Hotels.

Can anyone here imagine Sainsbury’s
allowing a feud between a store manager and his assistant managers to continue
to a point when the store does not open its doors or stack the shelves;

…but
we allow feuds – often decades old – to result in dysfunctional Associations
failing to meet even the most basic requirements set out in the constitution.

Can anyone here imagine
NatWest allowing a branch manager to refuse to sell mortgages as she does not
believe in them;

…yet
we allow Chairmen and Management Committees to refuse to campaign or canvass or
run GOTV as “they don’t believe in it”.

And can anyone here imagine
Hilton Hotels employing people who continually lose customers due to an
inability to use basic IT;

yet we
elect as our local leaders people who lose votes and membership due to their
inability to use email and social media.

I know of no other
organisation which has such a laissez-faire
approach to how its local branches work or are perceived; we have no Key
Performance Indicators, impose no quality control, provide no training, turn a
blind eye to continual non-performance and incompetence and fail to assess what,
if anything, is being achieved.

Is it any surprise our field
operations are falling continually further behind?

I acknowledge that the
majority of activists are volunteers. But when a member seeks elected office,
either as a councillor or a branch, association, county or regional officer,
with that office comes duty and responsibility.

Responsibility to those who
elect them.
Responsibility to their colleagues, and

Responsibility to the
Conservative Party in whose interests they have been elected to serve.

Those who seek office simply
to advance their careers or promote their own agenda are seldom nett
contributors to our success and would frankly not be missed.

The present proposals to
tackle our decline are Multi Constituency Associations (or MCAs). I fear these
are not only too little, but also too late and destined to fail.

My own experience of working
with two federated groups of Associations bodes badly.

Putting four weak Associations
with one or two strong ones usually results in the weak Associations giving up,
secure in the knowledge of their stronger neighbours will pay the bills and do
the work.

This results in further
atrophy of the weak coupled with anger and resentment from those who are left
to pick up the pieces.

In politics as in life; you
cannot make the weak strong by making the strong weak.

In my area, the hardest and
most demanding aspect of my job isn’t winning elections or raising the money;
it is managing the often unreasonable and competing demands of six MPs, six
Council Leaders, six Management Committees and 88 branch Chairmen, all of whom
think their needs should take priority over everyone else’s.

Putting a fresh faced,
enthusiastic yet inexperienced CCHQ trained 25 year-old campaign manager in
charge of an MCA is almost certainly not going to end well. It is unfair on the
members and unfair on the Campaign Manager to expect them to manage such a
viper’s nest of competing egos.

So where do we go from here?

What is clear is no change =
no hope. We cannot carry on as before.

We got away with it in 2015.We scraped by with the support
of the DUP in 2017.
We will almost certainly not be so lucky in 2022.

Our failure cost us at least
the 19 seats which we lost by a margin of below 1%; a stronger more focussed
ground war would have delivered victory and provided Theresa May with a
majority of 24.

To illustrate the problem we
face at grassroots level I would like us to examine the statistics from Kent.

Kent is a solid Conservative
county; we hold 16 out of 17 parliamentary seats with majorities from 7,000 –
24,000 and we hold of 13 / 15 local councils.

In terms of activism,
political strength and organisation I suspect Kent is as good as it gets for
the Conservative Party and probably better than most.

It is also a county where one
third of the constituencies fall under the West Kent Group and the other two
thirds do their own thing, so we can easily compare and contrast.

And if we are lucky, there
will be a little bit left for a newsletter, though sadly in many areas there
will be no-one available to deliver them and they will be hidden in the boot of
our councillor’s car until they find their way to the recycling bin.

There
is a better way.My
proposal is to take the best of what we do in West Kent but scale it up. My
plan is for the Party to establish a network of 25 Campaign Centres, each
covering around 20 constituencies, with separate arrangements for Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland.

We must not fall into the trap
of working out what we can afford then squeezing the model to fit the money we
have. We must work out what we need to win, then ensure the finance is in place
to deliver victory.

That means each Campaign
Centre should cover sufficient constituencies to ensure it has the money and
resource it needs to win rather than spending half its time and energy raising
funds. This requires a base of 6,000 – 7,000 members.

Each Campaign Centre would
employ

·An experienced “grey beard” Campaign Director
with the experience and confidence to knock heads together and focus minds

·A Campaign Manager to assist with campaigning
plus one additional CM for each target seat within the group.

·An Administration Manager to manage contracts
and supplies, data management, procurement and the day to day running of the
office

·A part time graphic designer to ensure our
literature was produced to the highest standard and also specialist help to
ensure we have a strong and vibrant presence of social media.

·A part time secretary to support the
Associations and branches

·A part time book keeper to ensure the money is
banked and recorded efficiently and to work with Treasurers to ensure we are
legally compliant

·All housed in a modern, accessible building
with sufficient space to accommodate the staff comfortably and professionally.

Obviously the costs would vary
from region to region, but around £220,000pa should on average be sufficient to
finance salaries and infrastructure. This, of course, would be shared between
twenty Associations.

The cost could be covered by
transferring membership income and the proceeds of the two annual draws from
Associations to the Campaign Centre.

Such a plan would negate the
need for national membership and all the attendant risks involved whilst
relieving Associations of the burden of collecting this money – something most
don’t enjoy and few do well.

My plan would also guarantee
the independence of Associations to do the things which are most important to
them.

Each would retain their own
Management Committee and Executive and the right to select their candidates run
their internal affairs.

The Associations only
financial responsibility would be to raise money to fight elections, and they
could do this from their patrons’ clubs, fighting fund appeals, social events
and contributions from councillors and candidates. Their continued independence
from CCHQ control would be guaranteed.

But most importantly we would
finally professionalise the party throughout the UK; ensuring campaigning was
based on local issues and local need, enable the best
quality literature to be produced with strong local content, that we were legally compliant and that
resources were directed to where they are needed most, which is not where most
of them actually live.

These changes could be
proposed by the Party Board, approved by the convention and ratified by a
postal ballot of all members then implemented nationwide.If some of the crusty backwoodsmen get angry
and resign in disgust, then we should say thank you and goodbye. The price of
failure is too high to allow progress to be derailed by those who look back to
halcyon days that never were.

The opening paragraph of the
Conservative Party Constitution is clear.

“the primary objective of the
Conservative Association is ….to promote the objects and values of the
Conservative Party; to provide an effective campaigning organisation; and to
secure the return of Conservative candidates at all elections.”

There is no mention of our
primary objectives to be to run garden parties, fall out with each other at
Executive Council meetings and squabble over the ownership of the photocopier.

Until we face up to this
reality, the influence of the voluntary party will continue to decline along
with our worth.Those of us who engaged
with politics to win elections and bring about change must take control of the
narrative and force change on voluntary party before it really is too
late.